Mecca deliberations had seen to it that Hamas ideology prevails in the form of a Palestinian national unity government. As Sever Plocker said in Ynet.com, “This Hamas achievement was granted by the Saudi leadership. After all the Mecca Agreement is the result of a Saudi dictate that tends to favor Hamas by some 85 percent. A unity government wasn't established in Mecca, but rather, a government under Saudi patronage.”

The Mecca agreement, signed between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah on February 8, 2007, under the auspices of the Saudi leadership, did not say anything about the acceptance of the right of the Jewish state to exist. It did not ask the Palestinians to halt their terror activities, implement all previous agreements reached, including the Road Map. It did not mention Gilad Shalit and it did not demand that Palestinian terrorists stop launching Qassam attacks from Gaza. The agreement remained silent on the subject of Palestinian terrorism and the smuggling of weapons from Egypt to the Gaza Strip.
 

The Mecca agreement, instead, stressed the need for the Palestinians to unify in order to remove the “occupier” from their lands. Hamas was sure that the Agreement would bring internal Palestinian reconciliation and enable them to turn their resources to the conflict with Israel and its challenges. “Our battle with the Israeli enemy is still on," Fathi Hamad, a Hamas leader in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp, told a few thousand supporters. He urged militant groups to resume attacks against Israel, and denied that Hamas would respect past peace deals. "We will be the spearhead of jihad ... to defend Palestine and Arab and Muslim nations," he said.

It is not very difficult to understand as to how the Mecca agreement could sabotage the summit: Saudi Arabia, in its campaign to counter the rising Shiite power in the region cannot afford to loose Palestinians; it has to win their hearts and minds. And there is only one way to achieve this goal: Champion the cause of Hamas by supporting their “Jihad” against the Jewish state. And that’s why all throughout the Mecca conference the emphasis remained on forming a unity government for just one purpose – to defeat the “occupation.”

The Mecca Agreement is a big victory for the Global Jihad against the West; it not only accorded international legitimacy to a terrorist organization without making it to give up its traditional positions but it also allowed Hamas to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudis and the Europeans.

Mecca deliberations were part of this Saudi campaign. Saudi Arabia’s hard work to find new allies and supporters to fight the Shiites has paid off. Islamists are now indebted to Saudi generosity. Hamas feels obliged and will one day prove its gratitude by being an asset in the larger intra-Islam war. What is troubling is that so long as Hamas does not accept Israel’s existence as a fact of life, their terrorism will continue to rock the region.

Another troubling aspect of this situation is that Saudi role as a U.S. ally and the source of Wahhabism are self contradictory: Wahhabism is committed to destroy Judeo-Christian values of which the U.S. is a symbol. Saudis are being pulled apart by their pragmatic policy of trying to remain a U.S. ally on the one side and a religious need to continue to spread Wahhabism to dominate the Muslim world. And unless Wahhabism undergoes some kind of a drastic revision, it will remain an anti-Semitic and anti-American faith. These conflicting Saudi needs are going to create a lot of troubles in the Middle East and will remain an existential threat to Israel.

Trilateral summit is the latest casualty of this internal Saudi conflict. A Hamas that is sure of Saudi support is going to be difficult to deal with and will remain a destabilizing force in the region. It is obvious that the Mecca conference has deepened the Hamas passions to work harder to establish their terror state from the river to the sea by destroying the state of Israel. And the Saudi King Abdullah did not help the cause of peace when he cautioned Palestinians against their “belligerent and spiteful enemy,” and promised them Riyadh’s unwavering support in their fight against the occupation.

Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas's political bureau, described the Mecca agreement as “a new diplomatic language,” adopted by Hamas because of “national need,” and stated that Hamas had not changed its fundamental position and that “every faction retained its own political opinions.” In various interviews, Khaled Mashaal and other Hamas spokesmen clearly stated that the Mecca Agreement did not contain recognition of Israel and that Hamas had no intention of recognizing Israel:

The fact that Mecca conference was about empowering the Islamists and Palestinian terrorists and not about peace and stability in the Middle East was obvious. According to some reports, a week before the Mecca deliberations began, Khaled Meshaal made sure to send an unequivocal clarification from Damascus: There was no chance of getting Hamas to commit to recognizing Israel. The movement's policy, dictated by Meshaal to PM Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, was not going to be radically revised. Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas activist in the Gaza Strip, also made it clear that Hamas would never recognize Israel and the Mecca Agreement contained no change in the movement's policies. Ismail Radwan, a Hamas spokesman, said that “the agreement reached in Mecca does not mean recognition of the Israeli entity.” Hamas's firm stance, he said, was “non-recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist movement.”

Ahmad Yussuf, advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, was asked about the Quartet's demand for recognition of Israel. He answered that Hamas did not recognize Israel and that the fundamental platform of the next government would not include recognition of Israel. From Global Jihad’s perspective, the Hamas-Fatah miniwar did not make any sense and had become a bitter deviation from a norm of unity and national cohesion. Both are supposed to be working to destroy the Jewish state, not each other.

The outcome of the summit has made it abundantly clear that the Mecca Accord worked to harden the Palestinian attitudes; it strengthened the Arab resolve to destroy Israel and empower the Palestinians in their quest to achieve this Islamist goal. It brought Mahmoud Abbas closer to the Hamas platform, allowing Palestinians to feel more confident in their campaign against Israel. Abbas has been quoted by PA officials as telling Rice that his top priority was to prevent civil war in the PA territories and that he had no choice but to strike a deal with Hamas.

The general impression that one gathers after talking to Islamists is that the national unity government was needed to consolidate Arab position to win the international support in their campaign to weaken Israel diplomatically. According to Saeb Erekat, a PA official, Abbas stressed that his top priority at this stage is to prevent internal fighting and to restore law and order to PA-controlled areas. "These are very important issues for the Palestinians," Abbas reportedly told Rice. "The unity government is needed to prevent internal strife and end tensions between Fatah and Hamas."

Against this backdrop, it can safely be said that if there are going to be more summits like the one that just failed, they must not be convened without satisfying some basic questions.

First: Can there be peace in the Middle East without Arabs accepting the right of the Jewish state to exist? If the answer is no then these summits will always be exercises in futility. The world should listen to Condoleezza rice, "It simply can't be the case that a political horizon can be built on a basis where one of the parties doesn't accept the right of the other to exist."

And second: Can a Palestinian national unity government comprising of Fatah and Hamas be trusted?  A national unity government with Hamas as a component will always remain a terrorist entity. History is a witness that Hamas has never betrayed its founding principle: the destruction of the Jewish state. Any group, whether it is Fatah or anyone else, that joins with Hamas without making it renounce terrorism, accept the right of the Jewish state to exist within defensible borders and give up its demands, like that of the “right” of Palestinians to “return” to their “ancestral” homes, must be looked upon as one that has embraced the Hamas ideology of terror.

There is no doubt that the Mecca Accord was aimed at creating a political and diplomatic environment that would have weakened the Israeli position and facilitated the terrorists in carrying out their campaign to scare the Jewish state into oblivion. The main objective of any such unity government is to be accepted by the international community by pretending to be moderate so that Israel can be pressured into accepting their demands.

The world will also have to see if the Saudi efforts are genuinely aimed at establishing peace in the region, or they are just another attempt to perpetuate the Wahhabi ideology of jihad by claiming to be working for peace.